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EMERSON'S ESSAY 



ON 



C OMPENSATION 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
BY 

LEWIS NATHANIEL CHASE 



1906 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF 

SEWANEE TENNESSEE 



.14 









I have nothing charactered in my brain that 
outlives this word Compensation. 

The Journal. June 2Q, i8ji. 



INTRODUCTION 

JIIiMerson's was a varied life. His name is associ- 
ated with many movements. Of some of them he 
was the vital force. Consequently to those who knew 
him well nothing about the man impressed them more 
deeply than the dimensions of his interests and influ- 
ences. It is this, perhaps, that marks the widest gulf 
between him and all others of his generation. He 
was the first to make the outside world aware that 
there was such a thing as American letters. And 
at home he became in his own life time a cult in the 
broad sense, like Carlyle, like Browning. Compared 
with his influence as a social factor there is somewhat 
ephemeral in the brilliant careers of his platform con- 
temporaries. Compared with his influence as an idol 
for the rising generation there is somewhat narrowly 
literary about Hawthorne and Poe for example: as 
there is about Stevenson and Pater and Arnold com- 
pared with Browning and Carlyle. 

The variety of Emerson's accomplishments is no 
longer remembered for its own sake but only in the 
light of historical association. That many-sided gen- 
ius which made him a leader in several departments 
of the world's work, has now passed, except in so far 
as it is perpetuated in his written word. It seemed 



vi INTRODUCTION 

at one time, when the movements with which his 
name was connected gradually dwindled, that there 
would still be left to him a permanent double place in 
philosophy and literature. Now the former has shut 
her doors upon him, and literature claims him for 
her own. He is bereft for present and future time 
of the auxiliaries of environment which made him 
the most important private American of his day. 
But these auxiliaries have proved themselves mere 
adornments. The man remains the same. Now, 
as then, the dimensions of his interests are impres- 
sive. 

Whenever it serves his purpose, Emerson, like 
Shakespeare, always repeats. No dissertation on the 
sources of his later writings would be complete which 
did not assign a foremost place to his own earlier 
work. He is not so inconsistent as he himself would 
be willing to admit. Put him to the test, and he the 
matter will re-preach of "the present action of the 
soul of this world, clean from all vestage of tradition." 
The weight of their significance in his mind at the 
time of writing determined the subjects of his themes. 
Whatever Emerson wrote was felt with such intensity 
of conviction that it represented his best thoughts on 
what was then uppermost in his mental and spiritual 
life. The result is — Emerson: even as "the world 
globes itself in a drop of dew. ' ' 

It follows that the essay of the following pages 
miniatures the man inasmuch as there was nothing 



INTRODUCTION vii 

charactered in his brain that outlived the word Com- 
pensation. 

The Latin saying comes naturally to the mind in 
speaking of Emerson's breadth: — nothing foreign to 
man was foreign to him. "Compensation" is typical 
of this in that the writer delivers himself of his inmost 
and for the most part his abiding thoughts on many 
matters: among them religion and government and 
art. It is not pertinent here that he elsewhere shifts 
his position or qualifies his statements. 

In theology Emerson's attitude was negatively a 
protest against New England Protestantism, against 
the "base tone in the popular religious works of the 
day." It seemed to him that "our popular theology 
has gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the 
superstitions it has displaced." His positive position 
was one of unfailing belief in the dignity of man. 
Men are better than their dogma. "Their daily life 
gives it the lie. * * * For men are wiser than 
they know." At least on the subject of compensa- 
tion life is, according to him, ahead of theology, and 
the people know more than the preachers teach. Em- 
erson was a pantheist and an optimist : "The universe 
is represented in every one of its particles. Every- 
thing in nature contains all the powers of nature. 
* * * The true doctrine of omnipresence is, that 
God reappears with all his parts in every moss and 
cobweb." "The soul refuses limits, and affirms an 
Optimism, never a Pessimism." In his "pantheis- 



viii INTRODUCTION 

tic optimism" he parts company for once and all with 
formal philosophy. Emerson's theology has contrib- 
uted to the working faith of thousands of Americans. 
Perfectibility of the race is the hope and creed of de- 
mocracy. Optimism is our habit of mind as a people. 

In politics Emerson was theoretically a pure demo- 
crat. "Nature hates monopolies and exceptions." 
The result of inequality is fear. "Fear is * * * 
the herald of all revolutions. One thing he teaches, 
that there is rottenness where he appears. * * * 
Our property is timid, our laws are timid, our culti- 
vated classes are timid. Fear for ages has boded and 
mowed and gibbered over government and property. 
* * * He indicates great wrongs which must be re- 
vised." Revolutionists may dwell on this passage, 
but there is no sympathy with lawlessness: "A mob 
is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves 
of reason, and traversing its work. The mob is man 
voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast." 

Penetrating epigrams on letters as on life — "Prov- 
erbs are the sanctuary of the intuitions" — are not 
wanting. But of far deeper import to art and litera- 
ture is the one brief paragraph which deals with the 
" voice of fable." It is, indeed, a declaration of the 
fundamental principle on which is based some of the 
firmest and most significant criticism of recent years. 

"That is the best part of each writer which has 
nothing private in it. * * * that which in the 
study of a single artist you might not find, but in 



INTRODUCTION ix 

the study of many, you would abstract as the spirit of 
them all." 

These thoughts on government, religion, and art 
alike, are colored by democracy. "The exclusive in 
fashionable life does not see that he excludes himself 
from enjoyment, in the attempt to appropriate it. 
The exclusionist in religion does not see that he shuts 
the door of heaven on himself in striving to shut out 
others." The best part of a writer has "nothing pri- 
vate in it." 

Emerson is the codifier and the most distinguished 
champion of American ideals. 

By means of such subjects as art, government, and 
religion in the ordinary sense Emerson gets his au- 
dience, becomes comprehensible to numbers of men, 
and touches them nearly. But his interests were 
broader and deeper than theirs. His own truest life 
was lived apart, and was characterized by devotion to 
two things — the intellect and the soul. The mere 
fact of his devotion to the former, and the purity of 
his devotion to the latter differentiates him from the 
run of men. 

The dominant note of the main part of "Compensa- 
tion" is intellectual, the delight in the continuous 
and connected exposition of a principle, the idea of 
Nemesis. Its author was not a thinker in the sense 
of offering an original contribution. But he was a 
thinker in the sense that one of his strongest passions 
was for tracing the processes of universal laws. Such 



x INTRODUCTION 

tracing is, of necessity, mainly intellectual. And he 
differed from more pronounced mystics in that he re- 
sorted to mysticism only as the final step, after severe 
training and straining of the logical faculties. He 
did not contemn the reasoning power. On the con- 
trary, there are few passages in his works in which 
he writes with more sympathetic eloquence than 
where he hails "the high-priesthood of the pure 
reason, the Trismegisti, the expounders of the prin- 
ciples of thought from age to age. ' ' When he speaks 
of "the innocent serenity with which these babe-like 
Jupiters sit in their clouds," who is there that does 
not picture the Sage of Concord as one of them ! 

The concluding pages of "Compensation" are con- 
cerned with "the present action of the soul of this 
world." This was always and ever the nearest and 
dearest of Emerson's interests. He had, in truth, 
but one enthusiasm, and that was for the spirit. The 
paradox suggested is unreal. To him, everything 
was spiritual. 



EMERSON'S ESSAY 

ON 

COMPENSATION 



COMPENSATION 

The wings of Time are black and white, 
Pied with morning and with night. 
Mountain tall and ocean deep 
Trembling balance duly keep. 
In changing moon, in tidal wave, 
Glows the feud of Want and Have. 
Gauge of more and less through space 
Electric star and pencil plays. 
The lonely Earth amid the balls 
That hurry through the eternal halls, 
A makeweight flying to the void, 
Supplemental asteroid, 
Or compensatory spark, 
Shoots across the neutral Dark. 



Man 's the elm and Wealth the vine 
Stanch and strong the tendrils twine: 
Though the frail ringlets thee deceive, 
None from its stock that vine can reave. 
Fear not, then, thou child infirm, 
There 's no god dare wrong a worm. 
Laurel crowns cleave to deserts 
And power to him who power exerts; 
Hast not thy share? On winged feet, 
Lo! it rushes thee to meet; 
And all that Nature made thy own, 
Floating in air or pent in stone, 
Will rive the hills and swim the sea 
And, like thy shadow, follow thee. 



EMERSON'S ESSAY 

ON 

COMPENSATION 

JlLver since I was a boy, I have wished to write a 
discourse on Compensation ; for, it seemed to me 
when very young, that, on this subject, Life was 
ahead of theology, and the people knew more than the 
preachers taught. The documents, too, from which 
the doctrine is to be drawn, charmed my fancy by 
their endless variety, and lay always before me, even 
in sleep; for they are the tools in our hands, the bread 
in our basket, the transactions of the street, the farm, 
and the dwelling-house, the greetings, the relations, 
the debts and credits, the influence of character, the 
nature and endowment of all men. It seemed to me, 
also, that in it might be shown men a ray of divinity, 
the present action of the Soul of this world, clean 
from all vestige of tradition, and so the heart of man 
might be bathed by an inundation of eternal love, con- 
versing with that which he knows was always and al- 
ways must be, because it really is now. It appeared, 
moreover, that if this doctrine could be stated in 
terms with any resemblance to those bright intuitions 
in which this truth is sometimes revealed to us, it 
would be a star in many dark hours and crooked pas- 



2 EMERSON'S ESSAY 

sages in our journey that would not surfer us to lose 
our way. 

I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing 
a sermon at church. The preacher, a man esteemed 
for his orthodoxy, unfolded in the ordinary manner 
the doctrine of the Last Judgment. He assumed that 
judgment is not executed in this world ; that the wick- 
ed are successful; that the good are miserable; and 
then urged from reason and from Scripture a compen- 
sation to be made to both parties in the next life. No 
offence appeared to be taken by the congregation at 
this doctrine. As far as I could observe, when the 
meeting broke up, they separated without remark on 
the sermon. 

Yet what was the import of this teaching? What 
did the preacher mean by saying that the good are 
miserable in the present life ? Was it that houses and 
lands, offices, wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by 
unprincipled men, whilst the saints are poor and de- 
spised; and that a compensation is to be made to 
these last hereafter, by giving them the like gratifica- 
tions another day, — bank-stock and doubloons, veni- 
son and champagne? This must be the compensation 
intended ; for, what else ? Is it that they are to have 
leave to pray and praise? to love and serve men? 
Why, that they can do now. The legitimate infer- 
ence the disciple would draw, was: "We are to have 
such a good time as the sinners have now;" — or, to 
push it to its extreme import: — "You sin now; we 



ON COMPENSATION 3 

shall sin by-and-by; we would sin now, if we could; 
not being successful, we expect our revenge to-mor- 
row. ' ' 

The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the 
bad are successful ; that justice is not done now. The 
blindness of the preacher consisted of deferring to the 
base estimate of the market of what constitutes a 
manly success, instead of confronting and convicting 
the world from the truth ; announcing the Presence of 
the Soul; the omnipotence of the Will: and so estab- 
lishing the standard of good and ill, of success and 
falsehood, and summoning the dead to its present 
tribunal. 

I find a similar base tone in the popular religious 
works of the day, and the same doctrines assumed by 
the literary men when occasionally they treat the re- 
lated topics. I think that our popular theology has 
gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the 
superstitions it has displaced. But men are better 
than this theology. Their daily life gives it the lie. 
Every ingenuous and aspiring soul leaves the doctrine 
behind him in his own experience; and all men feel 
sometimes the falsehood which they cannot demon- 
strate. For men are wiser than they know. That 
which they hear in schools and pulpits without after- 
thought, if said in conversation, would probably be 
questioned in silence. If a man dogmatize in a mixed 
company on Providence and the divine laws, he is 
answered by a silence which conveys well enough to 



4 EMERSON'S ESSAY 

an observer the dissatisfaction of the hearer, but his 
incapacity to make his own statement. 

I shall attempt in this and the following chapter to 
record some facts that indicate the path of the law of 
Compensation; happy beyond my expectation, if I 
shall truly draw the smallest arc of this circle. 

Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every 
part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and 
cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and 
female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants 
and animals ; in the systole and diastole of the heart ; in 
the undulations of fluids, and of sound ; in the centrif- 
ugal and centripetal gravity ; in electricity, galvanism 
and chemical affinity. Superinduce magnetism at one 
end of a needle; the opposite magnetism takes place 
at the other end. If the south attracts, the north re- 
pels. To empty here, you must condense there. An 
inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is 
a half, and suggests another thing to make it whole ; 
as spirit, matter; man, woman; subjective, objective; 
in, out; upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay. 

Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its 
parts. The entire system of things gets represented 
in every particle. There is somewhat that resembles 
the ebb and flow of the sea, day and night, man and 
woman, in a single needle of the pine, in a kernel 
of corn, in each individual of every animal tribe. The 
reaction, so grand in the elements, is repeated within 



ON COMPENSATION 5 

these small boundaries. For example, in the animal 
kingdom, the physiologist has observed that no crea- 
tures are favorites, but a certain compensation bal- 
ances every gift and every defect. A surplusage giv- 
en to one part is paid out of a reduction from another 
part of the same creature. If the head and neck are 
enlarged, the trunk and extremities are cut short. 

The theory of the mechanic forces is another exam- 
ple. What we gain in power is lost in time, and the 
converse. The periodic or compensating errors of the 
planets is another instance. The influences of cli- 
mate and soil in political history is another. The 
cold climate invigorates. The barren soil does not 
breed fevers, crocodiles, tigers, or scorpions. 

The same dualism underlies the nature and condi- 
tion of man. Every excess causes a defect ; every de- 
fect an excess. Every sweet hath its sour; every 
evil its good. Every faculty which is a receiver of 
pleasure has an equal penalty put on its abuse. It is 
to answer for its moderation with its life. For every 
grain of wit there is a grain of folly. For everything 
you have missed, you have gained something else; 
and for everything you gain, you lose something. If 
riches increase, they are increased that use them. If 
the gatherer gathers too much, Nature takes out of the 
man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, 
but kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies and 
exceptions. The waves of the sea do not more speed- 
ily seek a level from their loftiest tossing than the 



6 EMERSON'S ESSAY 

varieties of condition tend to equalize themselves. 
There is always some levelling circumstance that puts 
down the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the for- 
tunate, substantially on the same ground with all 
others. Is a man too strong and fierce for society, 
and by temper and position a bad citizen, — a morose 
ruffian with a dash of the pirate in him? — Nature 
sends him a troop of pretty sons and daughters who 
are getting along in the dame's classes at the village 
school, and love and fear for them smooths his grim 
scowl to courtesy. Thus she contrives to intenerate 
the granite and felspar, takes the boar out and puts 
the lamb in, and keeps her balance true. 

The farmer imagines power and place are fine 
things. But the President has paid dear for his 
White House. It has commonly cost him all his 
peace and the best of his manly attributes. To pre- 
serve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance 
before the world, he is content to eat dust before the. 
real masters who stand erect behind the throne. Or, 
do men desire the more substantial and permanent 
grandeur of genius ? Neither has this an immunity. 
He who by force of will or of thought is great, and 
overlooks thousands, has the responsibility of over- 
looking. With every influx of light, comes new dan- 
ger. Has he light? he must bear witness to the 
light, and always outrun that sympathy which gives 
him such keen satisfaction, by his fidelity to new rev- 
elations of the incessant soul. He must hate father 



ON COMPENSATION 7 

and mother, wife and child. Has he all that the 
world loves and admires and covets ? — he must cast 
behind him their admiration, and afflict them by 
faithfulness to his truth, and become a by-word and 
a hissing. 

This Law writes the laws of cities and nations. It 
will not be baulked of its end in the smallest iota. 
It is in vain to plot or build or combine against it. 
Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Res nolunt 
din male administrari. Though no checks to a new 
evil appear, the checks exist and will appear. If the 
government is cruel, the governor's life is not safe. 
If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing. 
If you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries will 
not convict. Nothing arbitrary, nothing artificial 
can endure. The true life and satisfactions of man 
seem to elude the utmost rigors or felicities of condi- 
tion, and to establish themselves with great indiffer- 
ency under all varieties of circumstance. Under all 
governments the influence of character remains the 
same, — in Turkey and New England about alike. 
Under the primeval despots of Egypt, history hon- 
estly confesses that man must have been as free as 
culture could make him. 

These appearances indicate the fact that the uni- 
verse is represented in every one of its particles. 
Every thing in nature contains all the powers of na- 
ture. Everything is made of one hidden stuff; as 
the naturalist sees one type under every metamorpho- 



8 EMERSON'S ESSAY 

sis, and regards a horse as a running man, a fish as a 
swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a tree as a 
rooted man. Each new form repeats not only the 
main character of the type, but part for part all the 
details, all the aims, furtherances, hindrances, ener- 
gies, and whole system of every other. Every occu- 
pation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the 
world, and a correlative of every other. Each one is 
an entire emblem of human life; of its good and ill, 
its trials, its enemies, its course and its end. And 
each one must somehow accommodate the whole 
man, and recite all his destiny. 

The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The 
microscope cannot find the animalcule which is less 
perfect for being little. Eyes, ears, taste, smell, 
motion, resistance, appetite, and organs of reproduc- 
tion that take hold on eternity, — all find room to 
consist in the small creature. So do we put our life 
into every act. The true doctrine of omnipresence 
is that God reappears with all his parts in every 
moss and cobweb. The value of the universe con- 
trives to throw itself into every point. If the good 
is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repul- 
sion; if the force, so the limitation. 

Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. 
That soul which within us is a sentiment, outside of 
us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in 
history we can see its fatal strength. It is almighty. 
All nature feels its grasp. "It is in the world and 



ON COMPENSATION 9 

the world was made by it." It is eternal, but it en- 
acts itself in time and space. Justice is not post- 
poned. A perfect equity adjusts its balance in ail 
parts of life. 'Aet yap ev irlTnovaiv ol Ato? kv(Sol. The 
dice of God are always loaded. The world looks like 
a multiplication-table or a mathematical equation, 
which, turn it how you will, balances itself. Take 
what figure you will, its exact value, nor more nor 
less, still returns to you. Every secret is told, every 
crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong 
redressed, in silence and certainty. What we call 
retribution, is the universal necessity by which the 
whole appears wherever a part appears. If you see 
smoke, there must be fire. If you see a hand or a 
limb, you know that the trunk to which it belongs is 
there behind. 

Every act rewards itself, or, in other words, inte- 
grates itself in a twofold manner; first, in the thing, 
or, in real nature; and, secondly, in the circum- 
stance, or, in apparent nature. Men call the cir- 
cumstance the retribution. The causal retribution 
is in the thing, and is seen by the soul. The retri- 
bution in the circumstance is seen by the under- 
standing; it is inseparable from the thing, but is 
often spread over a long time and so does not become 
distinct until after many years. The specific stripes 
may follow late after the offence, but they follow be- 
cause they accompany it. Crime and punishment 
grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that 



io EMERSON'S ESSAY 

unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure 
which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and 
ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed ; for the ef- 
fect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists 
in the means, the fruit in the seed. 

Whilst thus the world will be whole, and refuses 
to be disparted, we seek to act partially, to sunder, 
to appropriate; for example, — to gratify the senses 
we sever the pleasure of the senses from the needs of 
the character. The ingenuity of man has been ded- 
icated always to the solution of one problem, — how 
to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the 
sensual bright, etc., from the moral sweet, the moral 
deep, the moral fair; that is, again, to contrive to cut 
clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave it bot- 
tomless; to get a one aid without an other aid. The 
soul says, Eat ; the body would feast. The soul says, 
The man and woman shall be one flesh and one soul; 
the body would join the flesh only. The soul says, 
Have dominion over all things to the ends of virtue; 
the body would have the power over things to its own 
ends. 

The soul strives amain to live and work through 
all things. It would be the only fact. All things 
shall be added unto it, — power, pleasure, knowledge, 
beauty. The particular man aims to be somebody ; 
to set up for himself; to truck and higgle for a pri- 
vate good; and, in particulars, to ride, that he may 
ride; to dress, that he may be dressed; to eat, that 



ON COMPENSATION n 

he may eat; and to govern, that he may be seen. 
Men seek to be great ; they would have offices, 
wealth, power and fame. They think that to be 
great is to get only one side of nature — the sweet, 
without the other side — the bitter. 

Steadily is this dividing and detaching counter- 
acted. Up to this day, it must be owned, no pro- 
jector has had the smallest success. The parted wa- 
ter re-unites behind our hand. Pleasure is taken out 
of pleasant things, profit out of profitable things, 
power out of strong things, the moment we seek to 
separate them from the whole. We can no more 
halve things and get the sensual good, by itself, than 
we can get an inside that shall have no outside, or a 
light without a shadow. "Drive out nature with a 
fork, she comes running back." 

Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, 
which the unwise seek to dodge, which one and 
another brags that he does not know, brags that they 
do not touch him; — but the brag is on his lips, the 
conditions are in his soul. If he escapes them in one 
part, they attack him in another more vital part. If he 
has escaped them in form and in the appearance, it is 
that he has resisted his life, and fled from himself, and 
the retribution is so much death. So signal is the 
failure of all attempts to make this separation of the 
good from the tax, that the experiment would not be 
tried, — since to try it is to be mad, — but for the 
circumstance that when the disease began in the 



12 EMERSON'S ESSAY 

will, of rebellion and separation, the intellect is at 
once infected, so that the man ceases to see God 
whole in each object, but is able to see the sensual 
allurement of an object, and not see the sensual hurt; 
he sees the mermaid's head, but not the dragon's 
tail; and thinks he can cut off that which he would 
have from that which he would not have. "How 
secret art thou who dwellest in the highest heavens 
in silence, O thou only great God, sprinkling with an 
unwearied Providence certain penal blindnesses upon 
such as have unbridled desires ! ' ' 

The human soul is true to these facts in the paint- 
ing of fable, of history, of law, of proverbs, of con- 
versation. It finds a tongue in literature unawares. 
Thus the Greeks called Jupiter, Supreme Mind; but 
having traditionally ascribed to him many base ac- 
tions, they involuntarily made amends to Reason, by 
tying up the hands of so bad a god. He is made as 
helpless as a king of England. Prometheus knows 
one secret, which Jove must bargain for; Minerva, 
another. He cannot get his own thunders; Minerva 
keeps the key of them : 

" Of all the gods I only know the keys 
That ope the solid doors within whose vaults 
His thunders sleep." 

A plain confession of the in-working of the All, 
and of its moral aim. The Indian mythology ends in 
the same ethics ; and indeed it would seem impossi- 
ble for any fable to be invented and get any currency 



ON COMPENSATION 13 

which was not moral. Aurora forgot to ask youth 
for her lover, and so, though Tithonus is immortal, he 
is old. Achilles is not quite invulnerable ; for Thetis 
held him by the heel when she dipped him in the 
Styx, and the sacred waters did not wash that part. 
Siegfried, in the Nibelungen, is not quite immortal, 
for a leaf fell on his back whilst he was bathing in 
the Dragon's blood, and that spot which it covered 
is mortal. And so it always is. There is a crack in 
everything God has made. Always, it would seem, 
there is this vindictive circumstance stealing in at un- 
awares, even into the wild poesy in which the human 
fancy attempted to make bold holiday, and to shake 
itself free of the old laws, — this back-stroke, this 
kick of the gun, certifying that the law is fatal ; that 
in Nature nothing can be given; all things are sold. 
This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis, who 
keeps watch in the Universe, and lets no offence go 
unchastised. The Furies, they said, are attendants 
on Justice, and if the sun in heaven should trans- 
gress his path, they would punish him. The poets 
related that stone walls, and iron swords, and leath- 
ern thongs had an occult sympathy with the wrongs 
of their owners; that the belt which Ajax gave Hec- 
tor dragged the Trojan hero over the field at the 
wheels of the car of Achilles ; and the sword which 
Hector gave Ajax, was that on whose point Ajax fell. 
They recorded that when the Thasians erected a 
statue to Theagenes, a victor in the games, one of 



14 EMERSON'S ESSAY 

his rivals went to it by night, and endeavored to 
throw it down by repeated blows, until at last he 
moved it from its pedestal and was crushed to death 
beneath its fall. 

This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. 
It came from thought above the will of the writer. 
That is the best part of each writer, which has noth- 
ing private in it. That is the best part of each, 
which he does not know; that which flowed out of his 
constitution, and not from his too active invention; 
that which in the study of a single artist you might 
not easily find, but in the study of many, you would 
abstract as the spirit of them all. Phidias it is not, 
but the work of man in that early Hellenic world, 
that I would know. The name and circumstance of 
Phidias, however convenient for history, embarass 
when we come to the highest criticism. We are to 
see that which man was tending to do in a given pe- 
riod, and was hindered, or, if you will, modified in 
doing, by the interfering volitions of Phidias, of 
Dante, of Shakespeare, the organ whereby man at 
the moment wrought. 

Still more striking is the expression of this fact in 
the proverbs of all nations, which are always the lit- 
erature of Reason, or the statements of an absolute 
truth without qualification. Proverbs, like the sa- 
cred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the 
Intuitions. That which the droning world, chained 
to appearances, will not allow the realist to say in his 



ON COMPENSATION 15 

own words, it will suffer him to say in proverbs with- 
out contradiction. And this law of laws, which the 
pulpit, the senate and the college deny, is hourly 
preached in all markets and all languages by flights 
of proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as omni- 
present as that of birds and flies. 

All things are double, one against another. — Tit 
for tat ; an eye for an eye ; a tooth for a tooth ; blood 
for blood; measure for measure; love for love. — 
Give and it shall be given you. — He that watereth 
shall be watered himself. — What will you have? 
quoth God ; pay for it and take it. — Nothing ven- 
ture, nothing have. — Thou shalt be paid exactly for 
what thou hast done, no more, no less. — Who doth 
not work shall not eat. — Harm watch, harm catch. — 
Curses always recoil on the head of him who impre- 
cates them. — If you put a chain around the neck of a 
slave, the other end fastens itself around your own. 
— Bad counsel confounds the adviser. — The Devil is 
an ass. 

It is thus written because it is thus in life. Our 
action is overmastered and characterized above our 
will by the law of nature. We aim at a petty end 
quite aside from the public good, but our act arranges 
itself by irresistible magnetism in a line with the 
poles of the world. 

A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With 
his will, or against his will he draws his portrait to 
the eye of his companions by every word. Every 



16 EMERSON'S ESSAY 

opinion reacts on him who utters it. It is a thread- 
ball thrown at a mark, but the other end remains in 
the thrower's bag. Or, rather, it is a harpoon 
thrown at the whale, unwinding, as it flies, a coil of 
cord in the boat, and if the harpoon is not good, or 
not well thrown, it will go nigh to cut the steersman 
in twain, or to sink the boat. 

You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. 
"No man had ever a point of pride that was not 
injurious to him," said Burke. The exclusive in 
fashionable life does not see that he excludes himself 
from enjoyment, in the attempt to appropriate it. 
The exclusionist in religion does not see that he 
shuts the door of heaven on himself, in striving to 
shut out others. Treat men as pawns and ninepins, 
and you shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out 
their heart, you shall lose your own. The senses 
would make things of all persons ; of women, of chil- 
dren, of the poor. The vulgar proverb, "I will get 
it from his purse or get it from his skin," is sound 
philosophy. 

All infractions of love and equity in our social re- 
lations are speedily punished. They are punished 
by Fear. Whilst I stand in simple relations to my 
fellow-man, I have no displeasure in meeting him. 
We meet as water meets water, or a current of air 
meets another, with perfect diffusion and interpen- 
etration of nature. But as soon as there is any de- 
parture from simplicity and attempt at halfness, or 



ON COMPENSATION 17 

good for me that is not good for him, my neighbor 
feels the wrong; he shrinks from me as far as I have 
shrunk from him; his eyes no longer seek mine; 
there is war between us; there is hate in him and 
fear in me. 

All the old abuses in society, the great and univer- 
sal and the petty and particular, all unjust accumula- 
tions of property and power, are avenged in the same 
manner. Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and 
the herald of all revolutions. One thing he always 
teaches, that there is rottenness where he appears. 
He is a carrion crow, and though you see not well 
what he hovers for, there is death somewhere. Our 
property is timid, our laws are timid, our cultivated 
classes are timid. Fear for ages has boded and 
mowed and gibbered over government and property. 
That obscene bird is not there for nothing. He in- 
dicates great wrongs which must be revised. 

Of the like nature is that expectation of change 
which instantly follows the suspension of our volun- 
tary activity. The terror of cloudless noon, the emer- 
ald of Polycrates, the awe of prosperity, the instinct 
which leads every generous soul to impose on itself 
tasks of a noble asceticism and vicarious virtue, are 
the tremblings of the balance of justice through 
the heart and mind of man. 

Experienced' men of the world know very well that 
it is always best to pay scot and lot as they go along, 
and that a man often pays dear for a small frugality. 



18 EMERSON'S ESSAY 

The borrower runs in his own debt. Has a man 
gained any thing who has received a hundred favors 
and rendered none? Has he gained by borrowing, 
through indolence or cunning, his neighbor's wares, 
or horses, or money ? There arises on the deed the 
instant acknowledgment of benefit on the one part, 
and of debt on the other; that is, of superiority and in- 
feriority. The transaction remains in the memory of 
himself and his neighbor; and every new transaction 
alters, according to its nature, their relation to each 
other. He may soon come to see that he had better 
have broken his own bones than to have ridden in his 
neighbor's coach, and that "the highest price he can 
pay for a thing is to ask for it." 

A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of 
life, and know that it is always the part of prudence 
to face every claimant, and pay every just demand on 
your time, your talents, or your heart. Always pay; 
for, first or last, you must pay your entire debt. 
Persons and events may stand for a time between you 
and justice, but it is only a postponement. You 
must pay at last your own debt. If you are wise, 
you will dread a prosperity which only loads you with 
more. Benefit is the end of nature. But for every 
benefit which you receive, a tax is levied. He is 
great who confers the most benefits. He is base, — 
and that is the one base thing in the' universe, — to 
receive favors and render none. In the order of na- 
ture we cannot render benefits to those from whom 



ON COMPENSATION 19 

we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we 
receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed 
for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too 
much good staying in your hand. It will fast cor- 
rupt and worm worms. Pay it away quickly in some 
sort. 

Labor is watched over by the same pitiless laws. 
Cheapest, say the prudent, is the dearest labor. 
What we buy in a broom, a mat, a wagon, a knife, is 
some application of good sense to a common want. 
It is best to pay in your land a skilful gardener, or to 
buy good sense applied to gardening; in your sailor, 
good sense applied to navigation ; in the house, good 
sense applied to cooking, sewing, serving; in your 
agent, good sense applied to accounts and affairs. 
So do you multiply your presence, or spread yourself 
throughout your estate. But because of the dual 
constitution of all things, in labor as in life there can 
be no cheating. The thief steals from himself. The 
swindler swindles himself. For the real price of labor 
is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and cred- 
it are signs. These signs, like paper money, may be 
counterfeited or stolen, but that which they repre- 
sent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be coun- 
terfeited or stolen. These ends of labor cannot be 
answered but by real exertions of the mind, and in 
obedience to pure motives. The cheat, the default- 
er, the gambler cannot extort the benefit, cannot ex- 
tort the knowledge of material and moral nature 



20 EMERSON'S ESSAY 

which his honest care and pains yield to the opera- 
tive. The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you 
shall have the power; but they who do not the thing 
have not the power. 

Human labor, through all its forms, from the sharp- 
ening of a stake to the construction of a city or an 
epic, is one immense illustration of the perfect com- 
pensation of the universe. Everywhere and always 
this law is sublime. The absolute balance of Give 
and Take, the doctrine that everything has its price; 
and if that price is not paid, not that thing but some- 
thing else is obtained, and that it is impossible to 
get anything without its price, — this doctrine is not 
less sublime in the columns of a ledger than in the 
budgets of states, in the laws of light and darkness, 
in all the action and reaction of nature. I cannot 
doubt that the high laws which each man sees ever 
implicated in those processes with which he is con- 
versant, the stern ethics which sparkle on his chisel- 
edge, which are measured out by his plumb and foot- 
rule, which stand as manifest in the footing of the 
shop-bill as in the history of a state, — do recommend 
to him his trade, and though seldom named, exalt his 
business to his imagination. 

The league between virtue and nature engages all 
things to assume a hostile front to vice. The beau- 
tiful laws and substances of the world persecute and 
whip the traitor. He finds that things are arranged 
for truth and benefit, but there is no den in the wide 



ON COMPENSATION 21 

world to hide a rogue. There is no such thing as 
concealment. Commit a crime, and the earth is 
made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if 
a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in 
the woods the track of every partridge and fox and 
squirrel and mole. You cannot recall the spoken 
word, you cannot wipe out the foot-track, you cannot 
draw up the ladder, so as to leave no inlet or clew. 
Always some damning circumstance transpires. The 
laws and substances of nature, — water, snow, wind, 
gravitation, — become penalties to the thief. 

On the other hand, the law holds with equal sure- 
ness for all right action. Love, and you shall be 
loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as 
the two sides of an algebraic equation. The good 
man has absolute good, which like fire turns every- 
thing to its own nature, so that you cannot do him 
any harm ; but as the royal armies sent against Na- 
poleon, when he approached, cast down their colors 
and from enemies became friends, so do disasters of 
all kinds, as sickness, offence, poverty, prove bene- 
factors : 

" Winds blow and waters roll 

Strength to the brave, and power and deity, 

Yet in themselves are nothing." 

The good are befriended even by weakness and 
defect. As no man had ever a point of pride that 
was not injurious to him, so no man had ever a de- 
fect that was not somewhere made useful to him. 



22 EMERSON'S ESSAY 

The stag in the fable admired his horns and blamed 
his feet, but when the hunter came, his feet saved 
him, and afterwards, caught in the thicket, his horns 
destroyed him. Every man in his lifetime needs to 
thank his faults. As no man thoroughly understands 
a truth until first he has contended against it, so no 
man has a thorough acquaintance with the hindrances 
or talents of men, until he has suffered from the one, 
and seen the triumph of the other over his own want 
of the same. Has he a defect of temper that unfits 
him to live in society? Thereby he is driven to en- 
tertain himself alone, and acquire habits of self-help; 
and thus, like the wounded oyster, he mends his shell 
with pearl. 

Our strength grows out of our weakness. Not un- 
til we are pricked and stung and sorely shot at, awak- 
ens the indignation which arms itself with secret 
forces. A great man is always willing to be little. 
Whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes 
to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, 
he has a chance to learn something; he has been put 
on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; 
learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of con- 
ceit; has got moderation and real skill. The wise 
man always throws himself on the side of his assail- 
ants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find 
his weak point. The wound cicatrizes and falls off 
from him like a dead skin, and when they would tri- 
umph, lo! he has passed on invulnerable. Blame is 



ON COMPENSATION 23 

safer than praise. I hate to be defended in a news- 
paper. As long as all that is said, is said against 
me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as 
soon as honied words of praise are spoken for me, I 
feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies. 
In general, every evil to which we do not succumb, 
is a benefactor. As the Sandwich Islander believes 
that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills 
passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the 
temptation we resist. 

The same guards which protect us from disaster, 
defect, and enmity, defend us, if we will, from self- 
ishness and fraud. Bolts and bars are not the 
best of our institutions, nor is shrewdness in trade 
a mark of wisdom. Men suffer all their life long 
under the foolish superstition that they can be 
cheated. But it is as impossible for a man to be 
cheated by any one but himself, as for a thing to 
be and not to be at the same time. There is a third 
silent party to all our bargains. The nature and 
soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of the 
fulfillment of every contract, so that honest service 
cannot come to loss. If you serve an ungrateful 
master, serve him the more. Put God in your debt. 
Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the pay- 
ment is withholden, the better for you; for com- 
pound interest on compound interest is the rate and 
usage of this exchequer. 

The history of persecution is a history of endeav- 



24 EMERSON'S ESSAY 

ors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to 
twist a rope of sand. It makes no difference whether 
the actors be many or one, a tryant or a mob. A 
mob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving them- 
selves of reason and traversing its work. The mob 
is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the 
beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions 
are insane, like its whole constitution. It persecutes 
a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and 
feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon 
the houses and persons of those who have these. It 
resembles the pranks of boys who run with fire-en- 
gines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the 
stars. The inviolate spirit turns their spite against 
the wrongdoers. The martyr cannot be dishonored. 
Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison 
a more illustrious abode; every burned book or house 
enlightens the world ; every suppressed or expunged 
word reverberates through the earth from side to 
side. The minds of men are at last aroused ; reason 
looks out and justifies her own, and malice finds all 
her work vain. It is the whipper who is whipped, 
and the tyrant who is undone. 

Thus do all things preach the indifferency of cir- 
cumstances. The man is all. Every thing has two 
sides, a good and an evil. Every advantage has its 
tax. I learn to be content. But the doctrine of com- 
pensation is not the doctrine of indifferency. The 



ON COMPENSATION 25 

thoughtless say, on hearing these representations, — 
What boots it to do well ? there is one event to good 
and evil; if I gain any good, I must pay for it; if 
I lose any good, I gain some other; all actions are 
indifferent. 

There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensa- 
tion, to wit, its own nature. The soul is not a com- 
pensation, but a life. The soul is. Under all this 
running sea of circumstance, whose waters ebb and 
flow with perfect balance, lies the original abyss of 
real Being. Existence, or God, is not a relation, or 
a part, but the whole. Being is the vast affirmative, 
excluding negation, self-balanced, and swallowing up 
all relations, parts and times, within itself. Nature, 
truth, virtue, are the influx from thence. Vice is the 
absence or departure of the same. Nothing, False- 
hood, may indeed stand as the great Night or shade, 
on which, as a background, the living universe paints 
itself forth ; but no fact is begotten by it ; it cannot 
work; for it is not. It cannot work any good; it 
cannot work any harm. It is harm inasmuch as it is 
worse not to be than to be. 

We feel defrauded of the retribution due to evil 
acts, because the criminal adheres to his vice and 
contumacy and does not come to a crisis or judg- 
ment anywhere in visible nature. There is no stun- 
ning confutation of his nonsense before men and 
angels. Has he therefore outwitted the law? In- 
asmuch as he carries the malignity and the lie with 



26 EMERSON'S ESSAY 

him, he so far deceases from nature. In some man- 
ner there will be a demonstration of the wrong to the 
understanding also; but should we not see it, this 
deadly deduction makes square the eternal account. 

Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the 
gain of rectitude must be bought by any loss. There 
is no penalty to virtue; no penalty to wisdom; they 
are proper additions of being. In a virtuous action I 
properly am; in a virtuous act, I add to the world; 
I plant into deserts conquered from Chaos and Noth- 
ing, and see the darkness receding on the limits of the 
horizon. There can be no excess to love; none to 
knowledge; none to beauty, when these attributes 
are considered in the purest sense. The soul refuses 
all limits. It affirms in man always an Optimism, 
never a Pessimism. 

His life is a progress and not a station. His in- 
stinct is trust. Our instinct uses "more" and "less" 
in application to man, always of the presence of the 
soul, and not of its absence ; the brave man is greater 
than the coward ; the true, the benevolent, the wise, 
is more a man and not less, than the fool and knave. 
There is, therefore, no tax on the good of virtue; for 
that is the incoming of God himself, or absolute exist- 
ence, without any comparative. All external good 
has its tax, and if it came without desert or sweat, 
has no root in me and the next wind will blow it 
away. But all the good of nature is the soul's, and 
may be had, if paid for in nature's lawful coin, that 



ON COMPENSATION 27 

is, by labor which the heart and the head allow. I 
no longer wish to meet a good I do not earn, for ex- 
ample, to find a pot of buried gold, knowing that it 
brings with it new responsibility. I do not wish 
more external goods, — neither possessions, nor hon- 
ors, nor powers, nor persons. The gain is apparent; 
the tax is certain. But there is no tax on the knowl- 
edge that the compensation exists, and that it is not 
desirable to dig up treasure. Herein I rejoice with 
a serene eternal peace. I contract the boundaries of 
possible mischief. I learn the wisdom of St. Ber- 
nard, "Nothing can work me damage except myself; 
the harm that I sustain I carry about with me, and 
never am a real sufferer but by my own fault. ' ' 

In the nature of the soul is the compensation for 
the inequalities of condition. The radical tragedy of 
nature seems to be the distinction of More and 

m 

Less. How can Less not feel the pain; how not feel 
indignation or malevolence towards More? Look at 
those who have less faculty, and one feels sad, and 
knows not well what to make of it. Almost he shuns 
their eye; almost he fears they will upbraid God. 
What should they do? It seems a great injustice. 
But face the facts, and see them nearly, and these 
mountainous inequalities vanish. Love reduces them 
all, as the sun melts the iceberg in the sea. The 
heart and soul of all men being one, this bitterness of 
His and Mine ceases. His is mine. I am my broth- 
er, and my brother is me. If I feel overshadowed 



28 EMERSON'S ESSAY 

and outdone by great neighbors, I can yet love ; I can 
still receive ; and he that loveth, maketh his own the 
grandeur he loves. Thereby I make the discovery 
that my brother is my guardian, acting for me with 
the friendliest designs, and the estate I so admired 
and envied, is my own. It is the eternal nature of the 
soul to appropriate and make all things its own. Jesus 
and Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by 
love I conquer and incorporate them in my own con- 
scious domain. His virtue, — is not that mine? His 
wit, — if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit. 

Such, also, is the natural history of calamity. The 
changes which break up at short intervals the pros- 
perity of men are advertisements of a nature whose 
law is growth. Evermore it is the order of nature to 
grow, and every soul is by this intrinsic necessity 
quitting its whole system of things, its friends, and 
home, and laws, and faith, as the shell-fish crawls out 
of its beautiful but stony case, because it no longer 
admits of its growth, and slowly forms a new house. 
In proportion to the vigor of the individual, these 
revolutions are frequent, until in some happier mind 
they are incessant, and all worldly relations hang very 
loosely about him, becoming, as it were, a transpar- 
ent fluid membrane through which the living form is 
seen, and not, as in most men, an indurated heterogen- 
eous fabric of many dates, and of no settled charac- 
ter, in which the man is imprisoned. Then there 
can be enlargement, and the man of to-day scarcely 



ON COMPENSATION 29 

recognizes the man of yesterday. And such should 
be the outward biography of man in time, a putting 
off of dead circumstances day by day, as he renews 
his raiment day by day. But to us, in our lapsed es- 
tate, resting, not advancing, resisting, not cooperat- 
ing with the divine expansion, this growth comes 
by shocks. 

We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let 
our angels go. We do not see that they only go out 
that archangels may come in. We are idolaters of 
the old. We do not believe in the riches of the soul, 
in its proper eternity and omnipresence. We do not 
believe there is any force in to-day to rival or re- 
create that beautiful yesterday. We linger in the 
ruins of the old tent, where once we had bread and 
shelter and organs, nor believe that the spirit can 
feed, cover, and nerve us again. We cannot find 
aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. But we sit and 
weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty saith, "Up 
and onward for ever more!" We cannot stay amid 
the ruins. Neither will we rely on the New; and so 
we walk ever with reverted eyes, like those monsters 
who look backwards. 

And yet the compensations of calamity are made 
apparent to the understanding also, after long inti- 
vals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disap- 
pointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends seems at 
the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the 
sure years reveal the deep remedial force that under- 



3 o EMERSON'S ESSAY 

lies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, broth- 
er, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, some- 
what later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; 
for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of 
life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which 
was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupa- 
tion, or a household, or style of living, and allows the 
formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of 
character. It permits or constrains the formation of 
new acquaintances, and the reception of new influ- 
ences that prove of the first importance to the next 
years; and the man or woman who would have re- 
mained a sunny garden-flower, with no room for its 
roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the fall- 
ing of the walls and the neglect of the gardener is 
made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and 
fruit to wide neighborhoods of men. 





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